I had one of my bugs mysteriously go from a "Jimmie Johnson Piston Keyring" To a hand lawn sprinkler. Can't they leave the original attached item with the tag? I got an email from one party that said they were confused. They said that the sprinkler head did not seem to match real well with the name and description of what the TB was. I had to explain what it was when it started. They replied that that wasn't even close to what was attached to the tag. Go figure!!!

To let you know, it was a piston as expected when I dropped it off in Eau Claire, WI on 3/27/2004. Silverish, and had a number on the top of it if I remember correctly. I was caching with Silent Bob and Arcticabn that day, and I believe Arcticabn took it directly from me after I dropped it into a cache. Logs would indicate there was a mixup on it's trip to San Diego:

My TB Ruxubb (creatively named after the activation code) started off as a gold alien, then someone attached one of those green "Area 52" aliens to it, and now the gold alien is gone, but the green alien is still attached to the tag. It can be frustrating, but it's nothing I can control, and we just have to accept that some people will change what the tag is attached to._________________There comes a time in every young boy's life when he gets an irresistible urge to seek buried treasure.--Mark Twain

[quote="s4xton"]...or, NCad didn't seem to even log the cache page the date he took the bug and reported the change:

NCad and Arcticabn are the two people you'd want to talk to.

-Aaron[/quote]

I remember the piston well. I (we) scored it during our Presidents Tour in WI. I then took it to San Diego and left it very near the ocean. Actually the cache was in Mission Bay across from Sea World. It was a great cache location where I found my 400th cache watching the sunset on the Pacific.

My routing on my gps (but I'm not sure how it all works yet) says the faster way is Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia, and then North Carolina......

Well, it was proven that autorouting sometimes doesn't exactly route you in the best way Perhaps because Arcticabn's GPS is a couple years older it told him the best way was via San Diego._________________Sad state of affairs.

Kitch,
This is interesting. That was about 30 travel bugs ago and I don't remember seeing a picture of that travel bug, but I do remember thinking it was odd that a sprinkler head was called a piston. But pop-up sprinklers do have piston-like elements so I didn't dwell on the disparity long. I've certainly seen a lot stranger travel bugs.
What's more interesting to me is that I took it out of San Diego to a really desolate spot in the Mojave Desert, only to have it come right back to the San Diego area. I've half a mind to go find it again just to send it out of here.

- NCad

*********************************

Can you tell us your story on this travel bug...we are trying to get to the bottom of how it got switched from a "piston" to a "sprinkler head".